


And Then, Offstage:

by anonymau5



Category: Maggot Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Asphyxiation, Body Horror, Bullying, Character Death, Choking, Emetophobia, Gen, Gore, Hurt No Comfort, Vomiting, death of a child, personal hell(s), this all sounds very cheery doesn't it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1218898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymau5/pseuds/anonymau5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"no one gets away with sin. eventually, everybody pays. everybody suffers."</p><p> </p><p>Coven-inspired afterlife AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crawley Street

**Author's Note:**

> REEADD IT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE I DIDN'T ACTUALLY TAKE THE TIME/EFFORT TO SET THE STAGE:  
> alright yeah so i have my problems with ahs but I saw the last episode of coven and i f UCKING LOVE this idea of hell being this really personalized experience. like, your personal hell effectively embodies everything you actively tried to avoid during your lifetime, or the things you're most afraid of. that's essentially what's happening here: i've tried to construct a "personal hell" for these three characters wherein they're forcibly exposed to their worst fear(s), on loop, for eternity. but how did they die, where is the rest of the cast, you ask? haha idfk just roll with it ok please  
> ***
> 
> characters belong to jessica gazzard and eli inman, respectively. (also the dialogue during Lazaro's call is intentionally lifted from the original written version.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Body horror, Death of a child, Gore

 

_"The following message is transmitted at the request of the United States Government. This message applies to all areas receiving this broadcast."_

Your name is Lazaro Palmer, and you can't get a signal.

 

_"A Contagious Disease Warning has been issued for your area. Important instructions will follow."_

You're speeding down Scarlet Street, blinking back and forth from the face of your phone to the empty suburban road ahead of you so fast that your mind can't keep up–the road is just a blot of color screaming by as you careen down an empty avenue.

" _Repeat: a Contagious Disease Warning has been issued for your area. Important instructions will follow."_

You veer onto a main road singlehandedly, using your other hand to tap wildly at the keys of your cell phone. Still no bars. Something must have taken down a cell tower in the commotion. You fly past still and empty side roads, past freshly abandoned shells of cars and unmanned gas stations, picking up speed as you go: you've never driven so fast before, and you can smell the flesh of your tires burning.

_"Civil authorities urge that anyone traveling on foot or by car take shelter immediately. Where possible, stay away from doors and windows. If available to you, use a battery-powered radio to tune in to emergency news frequencies for your area for further instructions. Call signs for emergency news stations in your state will follow shortly. Repeat: civil authorities urge that…"_

You had given up trying to find a radio station that was still transmitting five minutes ago. Every station, every channel on every television had been overtaken by the EAS.

The useless piece of shit vibrates in your hand, the face of your phone lighting up with the message: _Signal found._ You slam your foot on the brake, your car screaming to a stop. You've dialed your ex-wife before you can even register, consciously, what you're doing.

" _Do not exit your shelter until further notice."_

The dial tone is flimsy and faraway, fading in and out. It takes you a few seconds and a tightness in your breast to realize you've been holding your breath.

There are three distant beeps in your ear. The call fell through. Your hands are shaking.

_"Do not drive."_

Not a second later, the phone vibrates in your hand: _Jennifer's Cell_. You press Accept before the first vibration even ends.

"Lazaro?!"

 _"Jennifer!"_ You nearly scream. _"Where the hell are you?!"_

"I'm in the car, you twat!" She hisses, and you can make out some metallic, percussive commotion in the background, followed shortly by the blaring of a car horn. "Crawley Street, it's packed, there's no way through!"

"Son of a bitch," you whimper to yourself, running a weightless hand through your hair, your heart fluttering in your ribcage. _"_ Son of a _bitch…"_

Something bilious and wet and sad in the background of the call roars out an animal moan, and you nearly vomit.

"Claire? _Is that Claire?!_ _She–is she okay?!"_

The line goes quiet, but you know the call hasn't fallen through–you can hear her breathing. White-knuckled and red-eyed, you stare helplessly out at the cityscape a few miles ahead, where the suburb bleeds into the metro.

"I'm coming," you promise hoarsely. "Stay there and lock the doors. I'll get you out of here." No you won't. "I'll fix this."

No you won't.

 

Everything rushes by you in a picosecond, an acid-dream blur of color and rush and sound and action, and then suddenly you're… you're _there_. You're there, in the mouth of Jen's open car door, at the arm of your dying baby, whose shallow breath and empty eyes and gashes hemorrhaging meat and pulp tell you you've come too late.

"How long's it been?" You hear yourself ask, but it's like you're listening in from another plane of existence, estranged from your body. You're behind you. You're outside of you. You're nowhere.

 _"An hour? I don't know–"_ Jennifer tells you, in tears, curled like the edges of burnt paper over Claire's near-lifeless body. It takes you a second to register that you're crying, too.

"What do we do?" she asks you. "Lazaro, what do we do?"

"I…" You are her father. You should have done something. "I can't…"

"Laz, _please!_ Her breathing, she's–I don't know what to do with her, Lazaro, _what do we do?!"_

Jennifer is getting frantic. You're somewhere else. Your feet barely touch the ground, you're so helium-light and dizzy with the onset of shock. Some voiceless narrator in this acid dream, as simple and as natural as an animal instinct, tells you that nothing you can do now will make any difference: your daughter will die. Your status as father–the only title that's ever meant anything to you, more than teacher, more than husband, more than man–has arrived at its abrupt and unceremonious end. Claire will never perch at another frosted windowsill, or poach another dollop of cookiedough from the pouch, even though she knows she's not allowed. You'll never chase a well-meaning boy off your doorstep, or lull her to sleep with your lips pressed against her temple, humming. And that's your fault. This, all of this, is your fault.

Echoing in from somewhere faraway, Jennifer's screaming snatches you from your stupor and anchors you to the tangible universe. Your daughter is dead.

Jennifer screams for one centillion years. The skin inside her throat peels and curls like rotting paint after the first ten thousand, but she goes on screaming. Your ears bleed, but you just keep on listening, hovering wearily in that same doorway, passenger-side, watching your baby's vacated body.

You never really loved anything until Claire came along, you find yourself thinking distantly, quietly. So many times you _thought_ you loved, but nothing took you so thoroughly as the the bend of the strawberry-sugar waves in her hair, or the way she teetered gawkily down the hall in mommy's high heels, her arms outstretched at either side to maintain equilibrium. You never really knew fear–although you _thought_ you had before her–until she slipped, dancing through a plot of summer mud, and bent her right ankle 'til it broke. You never enjoyed music until the first time she sang happy birthday and blew out your candles for you without asking. Even at your own wedding, you only danced once, with your wife, and only for ceremony's sake–but in the pale, early yellow of 8 a.m., when Claire would come to you in the living room, pirouetting and plie-ing and entreating you to take the lead, you'd ladle her up and sway with her, stepping to the acoustics of her laughter.

Some god somewhere has put you on trial, and he's deemed you fit to hang at the gallows ad infinitum. You receive God's wrath with open arms, at peace with what you deserve, when she rises, gurgling and spewing black death from between her teeth. This monster was born of your impotence, of your unfitness as a parent to protect your child. You're father to this devil, now.

The smart little girl you always knew she was, she turns her back on Jennifer and goes for your throat first.


	2. Boulder High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Asphyxiation, Body Horror, Bullying, Choking, Emetophobia, Gore, Vomiting

Your name is Owen Wright, and you're alive.

 

Or, at least, that's how it _looks_ : you gape at yourself in the reflection of the double glass doors, beige-skinned and blue-eyed. Your hair is clean, your clothes fit, your cheeks are lit and healthy with bloodflow. 

Slowly, deliberately, you turn on your heel, away from the glass doors to face what lies behind you: you take in the white-fluorescent scenery, burning cheap and cold and bright. You stare down an endless expanse of hallway, encrusted on either side with dark green lockers, punctuated by classroom doors. It smells fresh and cold, with a sharp, subtle undercurrent of floor cleaner. It's still, and silent, and as far as you can tell you're completely alone. Still, the hall–for all the hush and static–is nothing short of chilling, and you take it in with large, darting, disbelieving eyes.

Boulder High.

Something terrible grips you suddenly from the bottom of your gut and you retch, scrambling through the nearest doorway and into a janitor's closet: you vomit all over a carted mop-and-bucket, half-filling the receptacle with sickness. You've hardly finished spitting out the last tart dregs of bile when you feel your chest spasming, demanding more oxygen than you can supply. Hyperventilating, you bury your fists in your hair and sink back against the closet wall.

It's not possible. It's not possible. _You can't be here._

Your mind is having trouble keeping up as your body goes into a full-blown state of hysteria. You can't be here. _You can't be here! You–_

You twitch back, nearly screaming when you realize that the door's been opened, and that you're not alone. A janitor in a loose-fitting, dark green uniform takes you in, pokerfaced and wordless. Still high off the assault to your over-stimulated nerves, you open your goddamn stupid mouth and start talking before you even realize what you're doing.

"I'm so sorry," you shrill hurriedly, going lightheaded with terror. "I'm–I'm sorry, I was just–I didn't mean to come in here, but I needed to get–I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm here, please don't–don't _tell_ anybody, _please_ –"

He just deigns to stare at you, his head cocked, his face indecipherable. You force yourself to take a couple of deep, _deep_ breaths and, slowly unfolding your knees from your chest, you take in the janitor–awkward and lanky, dark-skinned and unshaven.

"Inglés?" You coo hoarsely.

He shakes his head, watching you like you're a little white-skinned alien with a second head.

You rub your palms up and down your face, screwing your eyes shut, and petition your body to regain _order_. Relax. _Relax_. You're _fine_.

You collect your quaking limbs and will them to uncertain motility, staggering to your feet and slinking self-consciously toward the door. You mutter a sheepish _"perdón"_ to the janitor before slipping back out into the hall.

You flex your fingers, making fists and unclenching them, taking in the endless hallway for a second time. _This is stupid_ , you tell yourself, sturdy and unmovable in your resolve. You're not scared. You're smarter than this. You're not scared.

You're _not scared._

You're ripped back into panic when a bell shrieks from somewhere in the hall, and the classroom doors go flying open, _hoards_ of kids roving into the hall, satiating the corridor with noise and activity. Panicked, short of ideas, you turn toward a cork board fixed to the wall, pretending to be busy reading a flyer, pinned up amidst an overlay of dozens. You try to camouflage yourself, making yourself as low-key and as inconspicuous as you're able, stuffing your hands in your pockets and keeping your breathing low and steady–and it _works_ , for the most part: nobody seems to pay you any mind. You start to breathe easier, knowing that–at the very least–you've bought yourself some time to work out a plan.

_"AYO TONY!"_

Your entire world cracks like glass.

"What's good, man?" You hear him, that _horrifically_ _familiar_ voice from not far down the hall. You keep your eyes steady, fixed to the flyer, your whole body having gone absolutely rigid. You're sure that if you tried to flex a muscle or bend an arm, the sinew would rip.

"Nothin', man, where the hell were you last night? Tommy and Amir were try'na hit you up, man, they were on Forest–"

Compounding your horror, you realize that the hallway is slowly starting to drain of students, who meander and filter through classroom doors. Oh, god. You've got to get out of here. You've got to get out of here.

"Yo–" you hear. "Wait wait wait, that's–that's, right there, man. Anthony, look'it– _yeah_ , man! S'fuckin' _Wright_ , man, _HA!_ AYO WRIGHT!"

Oh god. Oh god.

You take off abruptly, abandoning your pretense in a scramble of alarm and starting down the hall, as fast as you can go. You look over your shoulder as you race through the halls, dodging the odd student: he's behind you, chasing you, and _he's catching up._ Your heart stutters, and you pick up speed.

When you turn your head back to see where you're going, you get a noseful of his chest, slamming into him at a tremendous speed.

You reel, clasping your bloody nose. But he was just _behind_ you, _how did he–_

"It's _your_ hell, Wright," he tells you cooly, shrugging, like he's read your mind. "That means I can be anywhere I want to be. You're never out of reach. S'been a while, hasn't it?"

" _No_ –" You gasp, but he's on you in an instant, throwing you against the wall and keeping you there, his forearm held up to your neck.

"Think that nose is broken, man."

 _"LET ME GO!"_ You scream, thrashing with everything you've got.

"Nah, yeah, I'll let you go man, no hard feelings," he starts, digging his forearm hard against your neck so that you sputter and choke and gasp for air. "Beg me."

You spit in his face, a short braid of saliva and blood.

He laughs, and then he knees you so hard between your legs that your vision goes white.

" _Ow_ ," he grins at you, a flash of white teeth. "Forgot how bad that hurts, didn't you? Can't imagine ball-busting was really, y'know, an area of _concern_ when you couldn't feel _pain_. Although–I mean, I gotta tell you, man, being a zombie must have been, y'know, crazy. I mean that's crazy. That's–you gotta tell me about that shit sometime, man."

 _"Fuck you,"_ you wheeze, your legs clamped shut, your nose leaking, your throat pressed nearly closed.

"But I gotta say, though, I'm _impressed_ with you, man. You would'a been crying like a _bitch_ by now, if these were the old days. Cussin' and thrashin'–you _grew up_ some, huh, little dude? Tough shit, now, talk a big game, right? You're not gonna cry. You've got self-worth, now, don't you? You've got _dignity._ " He beams, and wrenches your throat in his hands like he's twisting a damp rag. "But I'll take care of that. Speaking of which, you were just about to beg me to let you go, I'm pretty sure?"

_"Go to hell!"_

"You seem to be missing the point," he tells you, grinning like the Chesire Cat. "You and me, Owen? We're in this for the long haul. You had your fun upstairs, you made some _very big_ mistakes, and now you've got to pay in your own coin. This? What we have, here? This is forever."

"You're lying," you all but sob, turning your head and dragging your nails down the flesh of his forearm; he's not at all fazed. If anything, he's encouraged. "You're _lying_."

"That's okay, man," he cooes, thick and warm with pseudo-affection. "That's alright. We've got all of eternity for this to sink in, you and me. But for _now_ –" He chokes you again, and the periphery of your vision goes black. "I can let you go– _conditionally_ , of course."

You've long since given up on keeping your eyes dry; your face is wet and hot and your sinuses burn with the onset of more tears as you work out–dejectedly, hopelessly:

" _Please…"_

"Please…?" He cocks an eyebrow at you expectantly.

 _"Please stop…"_ You submit, humiliated and defeated, forced to whimper and croon for your freedom–something that was yours by _right_. Something that you'd tasted, tart and savory, for what, in the grand scheme of it all, was only a heartbeat in time. You came from abasement in Anthony's vise, and to it–doused and wretched–you return. It's all the more awful now that you know what it's like to be autonomous, to be _free_. " _Please, let me go–please, I'll do whatever you want–"_

He grins wickedly, and drops you in a heap on the floor. You shrink in his shadow, staring up at him, wide-eyed and mute, powerless to keep the tremors out of your hands; you regard him as you would a formidable and bloodthirsty deity.

"I'll hold you to that," he promises.


	3. Lily Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Body Horror, Gore, Vivisection

Your name is Marianne Sutton. Order.

 

"Order!" Grace calls again, trotting into the kitchen and pinning a carbon order form to the cork board. "Need a nine-inch bourbon-and-brown sugar upside-down cake, one rhubarb tart, one dandelion and rosepetal tart, one pear panettone, two pounds gluten-free pizzelle–boxed, gift-wrapped, chartreuse ribbon if possible–and four dozen devil's food cupcakes with dark-chocolate-lime buttercream and chartreuse glitter." She dusts her sugared hands off on her apron. "Got all that, dear?"

You stare at yourself in the mirror above your workstation, numb and collected, steadying yourself on the metal table in front of you.

"What am I doing here," you deadpan at the mirror, gripping the table's edge so tight your knuckles go white.

Grace hushes, nervous and thoughtful, wringing her plump hands.

"Oh, honey," she clucks finally, patting your back consolingly: her timbre is sweet like limoncello, but her touch bites like moonshine. "I know you're cut to the quick about being let go. These types of things can be so upsetting, especially when they're still raw like this–but this, too, shall pass!"

The sting of her liquor touch recedes, and she retires through the doorway, back to the storefront. And the instant–the _instant_ she's gone, you turn on your heel and make a bee-line for the emergency exit. You will not stay here. You will not make the same mistake twice. You grip the exit's metal pushbar and press down.

Nothing.

You yank furiously at the pushbar, struggling to loosen whatever's sandwiched in there, jamming the door. You make a heated, frustrated sound, abandoning the red herring of an egress and returning to your workspace; boiling, you grab the closest commodity–a thick glass bowl, half filled with a folded soup of egg-whites and brown sugar–and _sling_ it across the room, launching it into the wall not fifteen feet opposite you. It pops like a balloon, exploding against the wall into millions of glass splinters and you–breathless, shaking, steadying yourself by clutching the workstation at your back– _you feel a little better…_

"Order!" Grace calls from the storefront.

" _No_ ," you tell her breathlessly, grinning at the spattered egg and pinpricks of glass littering the kitchen floor. Maybe you can't leave–but _you won't work_. Nobody can make you.

"Order!" She calls again. Furiously, you pull off your apron in one seamless twist and toss it behind you, turning through the doorway and into the storefront.

"I _said n_ –"

 _"Order!"_ And it wasn't Grace's voice, then; over a thicket of exclamatory bickering, some rich, male baritone–dark as coffee and worn as old textbooks–bellowed again: " _Order!_ I need _everyone_ to settle–counselors, the board has reached a decision. Ms. Sutton, Counselor–I'll ask you both to remain standing, if you would."

You slow to a stop, and again reach out to steady yourself on the countertop. What should have been the patisserie's shopfront had been warped–transformed into a very spacious, very official-looking office space, authoritative simply by way of its impeccability, all dark rosewood and glazed coats of brilliant finish. It's furnished wall-to-wall with bookshelves, crowded up with academic text and authorities on state and federal law. Perched center-stage is long rosewood table, lined with chairs which are occupied by official-looking personages, not one of whom wears a face. You see _yourself_ –some tired-looking iteration of yourself, the protagonist in a memory you've tried your damnedest to keep locked away–looking jaded and spent in powder blue polkadot and a low ponytail.

You watch an abhorrent memory unfurl before your tired eyes.

"Concerning the allegations against Dr. Marianne Catherine Sutton, the American Board of Surgery Administrative Hearing Commission finds you in violation of Chapter 334, Subsection C–"

Your lip _curls_.

"–wherein you knowingly and continuously performed inappropriate and unnecessary surgical services. The board has discussed this matter this at length–"

You clamp your hands over your ears–but you can hear them. You can still _hear_ them.

"–and has determined that, having violated the aforementioned, in addition to being in direct violation to the promises made in your Hippocratic Oath–"

" _Go to hell!"_ You scream at them, and no one hears you.

"–your surgical license will be revoked effective immediately."

You knock the cash register off the counter and trample back into the kitchen, destruction in your wake.

 

"If you're trying to grind this place up 'til there's nothing left," someone from inside the kitchen tells you, and you hiss, arm snapping out to grab a knife on the table, like you and the cutlery have some inexplicable magnetic attraction, "–you're gonna be disappointed. When anything breaks, down here, it sort of just… regenerates, I guess." He waves distractedly at the other half of your workspace, to the glass bowl you'd destroyed not five minutes prior–but there it was, mint and unscathed, still half-full of wet ingredients.

"But you can relax." His speaks with an uncharacteristic gentleness that makes your lip curl and your eyes catch fire. You hold the paring knife with both hands, at arm's length. "I don't mean any trouble."

You look him up and down, still scowling; he sits, cross-legged, on your workstation. His skin is all sand and bark, like the beachside, and his eyes are dark blue, like the challenger deep; he's working an orange in his hand, using the tips of his fingers to slowly and gingerly pare away the peel, so that it dangles below in one long spiral coil of rind.

"I find that hard to believe, coming from you," you tell him, taxed, dropping your arms exhaustedly to your side. "What's next, then?" You ask him with a short, salty huff of a laugh, gesturing with feigned disinterest to your surroundings. "Are the walls going to start bleeding?"

He laughs, breaking open the fruit and biting into the dripping half-moon. With an outstretched hand, he offers you the other half, and you scowl.

" _God_ ," he swoons, taking your silence for refusal. Beads of juice trickle down the side of his chin, and he smiles, drying his face with the sleeve of his shirt. "I forgot how _good_ that tastes…"

You roll your eyes, tossing the knife haphazardly away from you.

"Probably a good idea," he tells you cooly, fixated on parsing what's left of his orange into six neat slices.

"Can't imagine it'll do me much good _now_ , will it?" you sneer. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm the Welcoming Committee."

"You're not the real Davey Jones."

"No," he agrees. "Jeremiah David Jones, for all his pigheadedness and his short wick of a temper, is a compassionate person, and he's tried his best to do right by the people he's had to share the world with, and he doesn't belong here." He chews slowly as he watches you. He doesn't so much look _at_ you as he does _through_ you–like you're a leaf of wet rice paper, and his eyes are headlights. Like you're the Rubik's Cube he's finally solved. "He didn't deserve his lot."

"And you place the blame for his having been dealt a regrettable hand squarely on _my_ shoulders, then, I take it?"

"I do," he says cooly, sitting back. "And I take it by way of you _being here_ that the universe agrees."

"What I had to do to that poor boy," you explain slowly, tight-tongued and purse-lipped, "was a painful and unfortunate but nevertheless _necessary_ evil. Progress had to be made, and I took the initiative. But I _never_ forgot what I had to do to that boy, not once."

"Mm. Neither did he." He rubs his juice-sticky palms on the knees of his jeans. "You're a tall order, Marianne. One-in-a-hundred-thousand, even. 'Cause the _others_ –they're spending kingdom come knowing exactly what they did to earn their keep but _you_ –" He hops off the table and you twitch backward, instinctively closing your fist around a bread knife on the table behind you. "You're not like the _others_. You have no idea why you're here, do you?"

"I know why you think I _should_ be."

"Which is to imply, of course, that you think I'm mistaken for thinking so," he hazards, and you stand your ground in uncompromising and implacable silence. 

He stares through you, the gentleness dripping off his face in globs, revealing some grim and ominous countenance that so ill fit the face of Davey Jones that, even with seashore skin and gulf eyes, he looks less human now than he did when his skin was putrid and the biological machinery inside of him rusted and stilled.

"You've racked up more than a few indictments against your character, Marianne," he tells you, closing in on you. You step backward, maintaining your collected silence. You will give him nothing he can use. "But what you did to that boy is far and away the most egregious of the malfeasances you've wreaked on those unfortunate enough to have come in contact with you during their lives." His clothes start to drip off his body, oozing away from him in greasy, coagulated wads, like gobs of molasses. And, even though he's wearing living skin, he's still got the Y-shaped scar stamped into his chest, like a branding so traumatic that its presence transcends the planes of reality. The suture and the staples holding the scar in his belly together loosen of their own accord and drop–one by one–to the floor, and with nothing left to hold it closed the skin around the old incision peels and flays, baring his rib and muscle. Undeterred, he doesn't break stride, still moving toward you, even with the wet of his insides breathing in the open ear. You back up. "' _Why am I here'_? You're here because the aftershocks of your memory tailgate him. You're here because you have no idea how many times he's woken up piss-soused and bawling on your account, and you're here because even if you _did_ , you _still wouldn't care_. You're here because the nightmares, laced with the face of his iron-hearted assailant, have never ebbed–" He stands toe to toe with you, now, watching you searchingly. The warmth of his open wound radiates into your space. He smells wet, like fresh death, and the tang of viscera sticks to the roof of your mouth, tasting briny, vinegary, _turned_. "And me?

"I'm here so that the face of your victim will never leave _you_."


End file.
